Lufthansa to invest in biometric identification, eyes expansion in India operations

“We appreciate those initiatives and we are already investigating in that area. Now that (Digi Yatra) has been announced, certainly we will look into it. So far, not all authorities in the world are open to it, so we take it step by step,” Birlenbach said.

The airline also plans to invest heavily in innovation with a fund of around 500 million euros and aims to provide more individualised services to its passengers.

Lufthansa is the largest German airline and is also the largest airline in Europe, when combined with its subsidiaries with the Lufthansa Group operating a fleet of over 600 aircraft.

The airline, which has been operating in India since almost 60 years, is exploring expansion of its operations by adding more routes and increasing frequencies on existing sectors, Birlenbach said.

“Certainly India is one of the strategic markets. Presently, we have quite a good coverage in India. We are constantly looking into possible expansion, whether it’s new cities or also higher frequencies. For the time being, evaluation has not yet ended," Birlenbach added.

The airline currently flies 62 weekly flights from New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai. It will also resume Pune-Frankfurt route using Airbus A319 from November.

Talking about the impact of soaring oil prices, Birlenbach said airline is making continuous efforts to reduce costs. Air fares are being largely determined by an equation of demand and offerings, and not so much by inflated jet fuel prices.

“We are very much affected by high oil prices. However, there are different things that we are doing. First of all, we need to work on our internal efficiencies to keep costs under control. If you are talking about prices to customers, it’s always demand and offering that decide the price offered in the market, so it's not necessary that fuel prices will determine the prices that we are requesting from the customers…there cannot be a simple answer,” Birlenbach said.